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When I clean my air filter I just do it over nothing and I've realized that's probably not such a good idea. How do you guys dispose of the oil out of your air filter?

I've got a pretty effective system. Here's what you need:

1 gallon gas can

Oil pan

Large tupperware from kitchen

Nitril latex disposable gloves

Filter oil

Large plastic zip locks

Nitril gloves won't dissolve in the gasoline, so it protects your hands. Pour enough gas out of can to fill the oil pan about 1". Clean filter thoroughly, squeeze it out as much as possible, put aside to let dry for at least 5 mins. Keep gloves on. Then take semi-dry filter, bathe it in the tupperware container that has 1 or 2 full bottles of filter oil inside. Saturate the filter, then squeeze it out. Install the filter cage, and you're good to go. Pour used gasoline back into the 1 gal gas can, reuse it for a year or until it doesn't clean as well. Put the tupperware top on the tub of fresh filter oil and stow with gas can.

I have two filters and two filter cages, so I ride twice before having to clean them. I take the extra filter after it's cleaned and oiled, put the cage inside, then put it all inside a 1 gal zip lock bag to keep clean.

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If you use No Toil product you won't be handling/disposing of toxins. Their air filter cleaner PULLS all dirt out of filter.

I won't knock anyone for using No Toil, but it takes too much time for me. My friend says that the filter oil is water soluble so it dissolves if you get it wet.. that's no good if you're riding anywhere but the desert. Sunday my buddies and I were riding in the Red River, I mean pulling 3rd gear and sending splashing waves 7 feet high on each side of the bike. It was sooo fun!!! Bu I would never do that if I was worrying bout my filter losing its protection.

Please correct me if I'm wrong about the water soluble part.. just word of mouth gave me that fact.

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I've always assumed that it is, because its petroleum based is it not?

I just wash in a similar manner to loving off road pain, and when the fuel gets too nasty I pour it into one of my used oil drums and take it to the council disposal.

I won't knock anyone for using No Toil, but it takes too much time for me. My friend says that the filter oil is water soluble so it dissolves if you get it wet.. that's no good if you're riding anywhere but the desert. Sunday my buddies and I were riding in the Red River, I mean pulling 3rd gear and sending splashing waves 7 feet high on each side of the bike. It was sooo fun!!! Bu I would never do that if I was worrying bout my filter losing its protection.

Please correct me if I'm wrong about the water soluble part.. just word of mouth gave me that fact.

Plus it's not very cheap compared to my methods.

I prefer your methods too and have ridden similar shyt

But with the no-toil I think you need to use the cleaner to break it down before it washes out. Still won't use it again, however. Belray or motorex for me.

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its not toxic and will not cause any problems... oil comes from the ground to begin with, and as for the additives in the oils it wont harm anything.

People with your attitude 50+ years ago, is why I have a job. Your tax money is being spent cleaning up crap people dumped into the ground many years ago. Please don't pour oils and other solvents into the ground or down the drain.

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People with your attitude 50+ years ago, is why I have a job. Your tax money is being spent cleaning up crap people dumped into the ground many years ago. Please don't pour oils and other solvents into the ground or down the drain.

But it's ok to use old motor oil in pavement for roadways? LOL I get your point, no one here promotes polluting unnecessarily. But the green freaks and hippies are obsessively hypocritical about their objectives--e.g. they build tree houses to live in to prevent loggers from cutting down the trees, tree houses build of of WOOD.

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People with your attitude 50+ years ago, is why I have a job. Your tax money is being spent cleaning up crap people dumped into the ground many years ago. Please don't pour oils and other solvents into the ground or down the drain.

Mr. Freak, You have a job because the world is currently run by ignorant folks like yourself. What were you doing during your high school chemistry class? What do you do with the grease left over when you cook bacon? What would you do if you spilled a carafe of olive oil on the ground?

Before you have a coronary, No, I would not want to live in a pool of motor oil or axle grease. But I would also not want to live in a pool of olive oil or bacon grease. (Strike that -- I do want to live in a pool of bacon grease.) Chemically speaking, the only difference between all of these things are the number of carbon atoms in the chains and the purity (the motor oil and axle grease are more pure). And the fact that the crude is already made and comes out of the ground more refined, it pollutes/wastes less to deliver it to your door (per unit) than olive oil or bacon grease.

Regarding your statement about 50+ years ago, I'm hopeful that in 30 years (Maybe I'll still be here to see it) we can all laugh about folks like you as we currently do about folks from the 70s that were concerned about the nuclear winter/impending ice age.

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im just assuming I guess but isn't it? I wouldn't want that in my well

I guess my point is, it's not any more toxic -probably less so- than dirty engine oil. we all change our oil, right? So dispose of dirty solvent from cleaning filters with the used engine oil into the oil recyling barrel. No big deal. I'm sure there are some old school types who dump dirty oil on the ground and I don't advocate that.

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Now that I've allayed your fears of petroleum (or any other source of carbon or silicon) based oil, I'd like to offer my solution. I'll bet it's at least as "Ecologically Sensitive" as anyone's method. Game ON!!

I rinse my filters -- and I have a bunch of them along with skins for more frequent replacement -- in a clean white bucket of mineral spirits. I work them vigorously submerged in the stuff and squeeze (not wring) them out thoroughly. Then I set them out to dry on a grate covered by a towel. This provides good air circulation and generally allows them to dry for an extended period of time without me worrying too much about dust settling back on them. They can dry sufficiently in an hour in low humidity in the summer.

Then I Oil all of them (I think I use the Bel Ray stuff) and put them in zip lock baggies until it's time for them to be used.

I treat the skins the same way.

Now, the bucket of mineral spirits is filled with dissolved filter oil and the other crap (dust, bugs, etc.) that came out of the filters. I use the clean white bucket because I like to look at all that stuff. I use a similar method for cleaning my stainless steel oil filters, and in this case, it is even more important to see what is being filtered out of your motor.

I place an old cotton T-Shirt (two layers) over a large funnel placed on my original mineral spirits can pour/filter the mineral spirits back into its original container. Because of the low density of the mineral spirits, the solids decant out much more readily than they would in water, so they are normally left in the bottom/side of the bucket.

I don't know how long the mineral spirits lasts using this method because I've never actually bought a new gallon can of the stuff. I'm thinking it will be years and I'll probably replace it because I will just run out of it due to evaporation.

None of the byproduct of the filter cleaning goes down my drain or in the yard -- not that it would hurt anything anyway.

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Mr. Freak, You have a job because the world is currently run by ignorant folks like yourself. What were you doing during your high school chemistry class? What do you do with the grease left over when you cook bacon? What would you do if you spilled a carafe of olive oil on the ground?

Before you have a coronary, No, I would not want to live in a pool of motor oil or axle grease. But I would also not want to live in a pool of olive oil or bacon grease. (Strike that -- I do want to live in a pool of bacon grease.) Chemically speaking, the only difference between all of these things are the number of carbon atoms in the chains and the purity (the motor oil and axle grease are more pure). And the fact that the crude is already made and comes out of the ground more refined, it pollutes/wastes less to deliver it to your door (per unit) than olive oil or bacon grease.

Regarding your statement about 50+ years ago, I'm hopeful that in 30 years (Maybe I'll still be here to see it) we can all laugh about folks like you as we currently do about folks from the 70s that were concerned about the nuclear winter/impending ice age.

Not exactly a valid argument. Just because one chemical compound is similar in structure to another, does not mean that the health effects of one is the same as another. Hydrogen Peroxide has the same chemical makeup as water, just with one extra oxygen atom. Since water is harmless and oxygen is harmless, then why is hydrogen peroxide poisonous?

Petroleum products can cause all sorts of health problems if they get into your body. They can cause brain damage and damage to the central nervous system. Even petroleum jelly (vasoline) can be poisonous to humans. Look it up, there was a case just a few weeks ago of a woman who injected herself with vasoline and it shut down her nervous system, thus killing her.

Just because something comes out of the ground naturally does not mean that it is harmless to humans either. Radon gas comes out of the ground naturally. So does plutonium and carbon monoxide. All three of these can cause severe health effects or death.